Hey Guys -
I purchased a Shield about a month ago and love it! I think I have more fun experimenting with it than playing games. Unfortunatly, the Shield doesn't come with a large amount of storage built in. Fortunately, though, there is a micro sd slot (as opposed to my HTC One which doesn't have one ) I got a good deal at New Egg for a 64gb card and got it. After receiving, I inserted it then installed NextApp SDFix so that KitKat could write to it. Since doing so, it's worked very well and can tell no speed difference for apps residing on the Shield vs the SD Card.
Having a 64gb card and not much internal storage, I'm in the habit of installing apps and if above 100mb, opening settings / apps, browsing to the app, then choosing to "Move to SD Card." I've done this for all apps over 100mb and even some smaller ones. Below are the specs for my Shield followed by the issue I'm having...
My nVidia Shield Specs
- OS: Android KitKat 4.4.2
- Kernel: 3.4.10-g73896af
- Build: KOT49H.01.00.17394.0077 (latest public release)
- sdcard0 (Internal) - 11.32gb used / 1.40gb free
- sdcard1 (SD Card) - 45.28gb used / 12.96gb free
- Software Modifications
- Rooted
- Xposed Installer 2.6.1 + 3-4 modules (basically GUI mods - nothing hardcore)
My Issue
Even though I've moved all 100mb+ apps to sd card, have no media, or other files on internal storage; I don't have enough room to install large apps anymore. I have plently of room on my sd card which is where I'd move it to post install, but first must install it before I can move it. Below are full details for the issue I've found after investigating.
If there's a method to have Shield install apps directly to sd card by default, it may work. I've found solutions online - but - my fear is that trying to do this workaround may mess up any existing symlinking or other things. Details for what I'm talking about are below...
Issue Detailed
When I choose to move apps to the SD Card, I do see space around what the app takes up freed from my internal storage as I should. However, I've verified that all 100mb+ apps have been moved (30+gb worth); but my internal storage shows only 1.40gb available! I understand that moving an app probably doesn't move all of the app's files, but I'd think at least the bulk of them.
When I started to investigate the file system, I found files which should be on the SD Card which seemed to be located on the internal storage. Is this due to symlinking? Even though reported as such, I know it's not possible as the total size of these files exceeded what internal could hold. Do these actions give a false-positive for how much free space I actually do have internally?
Example: When I got the properties of root/Android/obb/ on sdcard0 (internal storage) it showed it's size to be 26.0gb. Internal storage is half that!
To investigate, I installed a couple of apps to show disk usage. I bought Disk & Storage Analyzer (root) and let it run. It was able to show space stats for internal & sd separately - but - seemed to not to be able to tell the correct place individual files were coming from.
Overall
Sorry if I got carried away with description - I'm just frustrated. If you understand how my scenario was designed to work and perhaps what my options are (if any), I'd appreciate it.
Thanks for your help and time! Ben
If I'm not mistaking, moving a super large app to SD card only moves a very little fraction of the app data. For example, it only moves %4 of GTA San Andreas, which is absolute bs. I don't know exactly why, it may be a kitkat issue. I haven't tried moving an app to SD on jb since I went to kitkat as soon as I got my shield a while back.
Sent from my SHIELD using XDA Free mobile app
Kite-G said:
If I'm not mistaking, moving a super large app to SD card only moves a very little fraction of the app data. For example, it only moves %4 of GTA San Andreas, which is absolute bs. I don't know exactly why, it may be a kitkat issue. I haven't tried moving an app to SD on jb since I went to kitkat as soon as I got my shield a while back.
Sent from my SHIELD using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply, but don't believe that's the case. It's seemingly moving a lot of the data as once i "move" an app, it shows free space back on the OEM storage again as free which may then be used to install other apps to this internal storage.
After additional research, I have a question which may resolve this. As mentioned above, after I received the SD card and inserted it, I installed an app which allowed KitKat to have additional rights to the card that jellybean previously had. Since then, I've found out that it seems as if with the Shield specifically, moving installed apps/games to the SD card is a native feature where this 3rd party app isn't required. The post I read this on said this still occurred using KitKat, too.
Current Question
So - could it be that this 3rd party app is causing the issues? I installed the app before attempting to move an installed game so don't know if it works. Does anyone else know?
I wouldn't mind uninstalling the 3rd party "workaround" app, but don't want to loose a bunch of data in the process.
Your thoughts? Thanks!
I understand that for security reasons, google thinks phones should not have sdcards and has recently made changes to restrict how sdcards can be used on kitkat: KitKat and SD cards — what's fixed, what's broken and what's misunderstood
Motorola made some changes to allow some parts of some apps to be movable to sdcard. But this also has some problems. For example, if I replace the chrome icon in the quick launch area with firefox and firefox has been moved to the sdcard, the icon disappears on reboot because the partition apparently isn't mounted yet when it needs the icon. Apparently, they made some changes to the default launcher to compensate for this but because I'm using the google now launcher, the icons disappear.
I am getting ready to go through the process of unlocking my bootloader and rooting my phone which will, of course, wipe it and I get to reinstall all my apps and media. Once the phone is rooted, are there any options for moving apps to sdcard that work on 4.4.4 and beyond? In previous android versions, we used apps like link2sd and mount2sd but I assume these won't work on 4.4.4? One of my main motivations for rooting is being able to tweak min free so it doesn't kill and restart apps every time I switch between them. Another is being able to remove protected apps I don't need, like quickoffice - at least this will free up some internal memory!
How about cyanogenmod - does it have the same restrictions on what can be moved to the sdcard? It seems cyanogenmod is coming along but may still have some important issues to be resolved.
I bought my phone when they released the LTE model because it had the sdcard as well as the faster data. It seems that Motorola has solved the problem of some sdcards not working - probably by slowing down access to it to make it work with more cards. The problem is that the LTE version only comes with 8 GB of internal storage. So I have lots of free space on my sdcard but my phone is still full and I have problems updating some things due to lack on space on the internal memory. Some of the applications I had moved to sdcard were no longer there so I'm assuming what happened is that it deleted them prior to installing an updated version but then the installation of the new version failed due to not enough space in internal memory.
In this thread I want to share my thoughts and experiences on how to optimize storage and memory for a phone with low internal memory and with access to an SD card, for example like the LG G4S (model H735) with only 8GB internal memory and 1.5GB RAM.
I'm happy to hear more suggestions to optimize!
First of all, you need to root your phone. Find out how to do this for your individual model.
Once you're rooted, you can optimize your storage and memory:
Get a good SD card with fast read and write speeds! This is crucial as you're going to be running lots of apps from it. Get a 32GB (or if your phone supports more, then more!).
You should partition your SD card so that you can make a second partition with the ext4 file system used by Android. Only then will you be able to move almost all your apps to SD! See notes below on how to partition your SD card.
You can now use the excellent Link2SD app to do all of the cleaning tasks:
Moving & linking apps & data to SD
Uninstall system apps
By default, you will only be able to move the "user" apps (the ones which were not installed as part of the system, e.g. the ones you installed yourself). But we can get around this with many apps! This is described below (in 4.).
You may have noticed that when you switch between apps, e.g. between your game and your messaging app, every time you switch, the app reloads (e.g. the game takes ages to start up again). This is because your RAM (main memory) usage is not optimized. You can also do something which is likely fix this, which I will describe below (in 5.).
1. A word about data usage of an app
You may have wondered why your memory usage is still so high when you moved your app to an SD card with the classic Android "Move to SD" functionality (which you can access via the Android app settings).
Well, the classic Android "Move to SD" only moves the app. But often the bulk of the data is actually not in the app itself, but in the data and OBB files of the app! In games, this can be up to several gigabytes. And this stuff remains on your internal storage! So we will need to move this as well, and then "link" to the moved data, so the Android OS "believes" that the data is still on internal storage. Imagine this similar to doing a (soft)link to a file on your computer.
Also, doing it this way ("linking") is much better than the classic Android move-apps. For example, you can avoid problems with widgets which may not run any more once they have been moved to SD with Android move-apps.
There are a few apps which can help you move&link your apps and data. I have tried a few, and in my opinion Link2SD is the best, as it
already detects if your app uses OBB and data files
you can easily display the apps which use most storage (also in terms of data files!)
and you can also uninstall system apps more reliably than with other root apps!
You will need to get the pro version in order to do everything with it, but this is $2 well worth spending, you won't need any other apps for managing the moving. It's much easier than e.g. FolderMount to easily move all the relevant data of an app to SD.
2. The partitions on your phone
Most likely, your phone will be using different partitions on the internal storage for different purposes. For example, there may be a partition which is exclusively to be used for the "system" (the Android OS and system applications).
You can use an app like Disk Info to show the partitions on your internal storage (and SD card) and how much space is still free on them.
This may vary between phones, but in most cases you should find a "data" partition or similar, which is used for
Applications installed by you
Updates of system apps (!!!)
Data, Cache, OBB files etc. used by your apps
The size of this data partition is pretty much what you can get out of your internal storage: if you move everything out of there, this is the maximum free space you can get (again, it may vary from phone to phone). You cannot easily get access to the system and cache partition to use as storage space, and you shouldn't try to mess with that anyway.
So what you can try to do, is shove as much as possible out of the data partition onto your SD card. The free space on data can then be used as a "buffer" when you download and install applications, before you move&link them onto the SD card.
Note also that your data partition is used for updates which may have been automatically downloaded. This may take up a significant chunk of your data partition! So you may want to either:
Move the whole system app to SD card (see below described for Link2SD).
Or, "merge" the updates into the main app, so that it then resides on the system partition again.
To merge the update with the main app, long-tap (tap and hold) on the app in Link2SD and select Integrate app into system. However keep an eye on the free disk space on the system partition, you don't want it to get too close to using full capacity! So only merge updates when you're sure there is enough free space on /system.
3. Partition your SD card
It is important that you create a second partition on your SD card, formatted with the ext4 file system used by Android. Only then will you be able to move all apps completely onto SD.
On Windows, you can use Mini Tool Partition Wizard to partition your SD card and format the second partition as ext4. I won't go into detailed instructions here, there's other documentation for this on-line.
Only a few notes:
It is important that you format the ext4 partition as "primary" also!!!
You can also "resize" the first partition (the FAT32 which may already be on it), without losing your data. However if something goes wrong, you may lose the data anyway, so it's advisable to backup your data on the SD card before.
You may want to keep a FAT32 partition (also formatted as primary), because on windows systems you cannot easily read ext4, so you may want to use the FAT partition to store your pictures etc., which you can then also read from a Windows computer.
4. Use Link2SD to move your apps
Open Link2SD and you will see a list of your apps. On the top bar you can select to display only apps of certain types, e.g. "user" and "system" apps. And you can also sort them according to different criteria, e.g. "Name" or "Size". I often use "Size (total)" in the bottom of the sorting criteria list. This shows the apps which use the most data overall first.
First, we will move the "user" apps to SD.
Display all the "user" apps and click on the first one you want to move & link to SD.
You will see a detailed list of your app and data usage.
You will see buttons to Link to SD card or Remove link. Below this, you see a field titled Android App2SD in which you can Move to SD Card --- this is the classic Android way to move apps: don't use this! Use Link to SD Card instead
After selecting Link to SD card , you can tick the boxes for everything you would like to move (app/cache/internal data...), and then click OK. Link2SD will move all your stuff to the ext4 partition of your SD card and then also link to it.
The apps which also use OBB files and extra data/cache will display extra boxes in Link2SD. Try a game app for example to see this, large games are likely to use this. You can click Link to SD for these extra files also, and it'll be all moved to your SD! Warning: I've had problems particularly with moving OBB files, sometimes also with data files -- the app was not launching properly after I've moved the OBBs. This is not the fault of Link2SD though, I've had the same problems with other apps like for example FolderMount.
If you want to undo the linking, just use Link2SD and select Remove Link. All your data will be moved back to internal storage, and the link will be removed. All back to how it was before. Easy!
Now you may also want to move system apps to SD to create even more space. While system apps natively reside on the /system partition (see 2. above), they also may store data and cache on the /data partition. Or, you may also want to create more space in the /system partition by moving system apps to SD.
The problem is, even though you are rooted, you cannot move the system apps. And for many of the system apps, you shouldn't do this either. However, it is safe to do this for apps which are installed as "system" but not really an integral part of the OS, such as
Chrome
Google maps
Google docs
Google drive
YouTube
and more.
To move them, you can use Link2SD to convert them from "system" app to "user" app.
Open Link2SD and long-tap (tap and hold) on the app to open the options menu. If you have a Convert to user app option, that's that!
If you don't have the conversion option, you can try something else:
Uninstall the app first by long-tapping on the app in Link2SD, and selecting Uninstall. But first make sure you will be able to download this app from Google Play!
You will need to reboot the phone.
Re-install the app from Google Play.
Now, you can use Link2SD to link the app to SD as we did for the user apps before.
Important: Never to this for core system apps, and I would also not touch Google Play or any of its services.
Note: You may also consider to just merge the updates of a system app so that it resides in the /system partition again. See description above (2.) for more details.
5. Optimizing your RAM
What I found particularly annoying on my LG G4S (H735) is that whenever I switched between my game (large files) and another app (e.g. messaging app), the game would load up from scratch again, which would take a few minutes. The reason for this is that the default settings on the phone were set to keep a too big part of the memory "free", so other apps were "killed" as soon as I was using my game. When I then switched back to home screen, all the other apps had to be re-launched, and my game instead "killed" again.
You can decrease the threshold of reserved free memory by editing the build props. There's a risk to get an unstable system if you tweak this too much, but if you try carefully, it may be ok. And you can also reset it to defaults if you're not happy with the results.
You will need a build prop editor, for example the Build Prop Editor app. Open it, and click on the "edit" pencil below to edit the following values:
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree1=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree2=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree3=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree4=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree5=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree6=...
It worked like a treat on my phone (LG G4S with 1.5GB RAM) and was also reported to work nicely with the LG G3, using the following values:
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree1=49152 (unchanged)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree2=61440 (unchanged)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree3=65000 (was set to 73728 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree4=70000 (was set to 204800 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree5=80000 (was set to 262144 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree6=100000 (was set to 327680 originally)
Please share your experiences if you have some tipps to further optimize low-memory phones! Thanks
See also
http://forums.androidcentral.com/lg...ry-using-link2sd-w-pros-cons-vs-data2ext.html
http://www.link2sd.info/faq
jen.magnolis said:
In this thread I want to share my thoughts and experiences on how to optimize storage and memory for a phone with low internal memory and with access to an SD card, for example like the LG G4S (model H735) with only 8GB internal memory and 1.5GB RAM.
I'm happy to hear more suggestions to optimize!
First of all, you need to root your phone. Find out how to do this for your individual model.
Once you're rooted, you can optimize your storage and memory:
Get a good SD card with fast read and write speeds! This is crucial as you're going to be running lots of apps from it. Get a 32GB (or if your phone supports more, then more!).
You should partition your SD card so that you can make a second partition with the ext4 file system used by Android. Only then will you be able to move almost all your apps to SD! See notes below on how to partition your SD card.
You can now use the excellent Link2SD app to do all of the cleaning tasks:
Moving & linking apps & data to SD
Uninstall system apps
By default, you will only be able to move the "user" apps (the ones which were not installed as part of the system, e.g. the ones you installed yourself). But we can get around this with many apps! This is described below (in 4.).
You may have noticed that when you switch between apps, e.g. between your game and your messaging app, every time you switch, the app reloads (e.g. the game takes ages to start up again). This is because your RAM (main memory) usage is not optimized. You can also do something which is likely fix this, which I will describe below (in 5.).
1. A word about data usage of an app
You may have wondered why your memory usage is still so high when you moved your app to an SD card with the classic Android "Move to SD" functionality (which you can access via the Android app settings).
Well, the classic Android "Move to SD" only moves the app. But often the bulk of the data is actually not in the app itself, but in the data and OBB files of the app! In games, this can be up to several gigabytes. And this stuff remains on your internal storage! So we will need to move this as well, and then "link" to the moved data, so the Android OS "believes" that the data is still on internal storage. Imagine this similar to doing a (soft)link to a file on your computer.
Also, doing it this way ("linking") is much better than the classic Android move-apps. For example, you can avoid problems with widgets which may not run any more once they have been moved to SD with Android move-apps.
There are a few apps which can help you move&link your apps and data. I have tried a few, and in my opinion Link2SD is the best, as it
already detects if your app uses OBB and data files
you can easily display the apps which use most storage (also in terms of data files!)
and you can also uninstall system apps more reliably than with other root apps!
You will need to get the pro version in order to do everything with it, but this is $2 well worth spending, you won't need any other apps for managing the moving. It's much easier than e.g. FolderMount to easily move all the relevant data of an app to SD.
2. The partitions on your phone
Most likely, your phone will be using different partitions on the internal storage for different purposes. For example, there may be a partition which is exclusively to be used for the "system" (the Android OS and system applications).
You can use an app like Disk Info to show the partitions on your internal storage (and SD card) and how much space is still free on them.
This may vary between phones, but in most cases you should find a "data" partition or similar, which is used for
Applications installed by you
Updates of system apps (!!!)
Data, Cache, OBB files etc. used by your apps
The size of this data partition is pretty much what you can get out of your internal storage: if you move everything out of there, this is the maximum free space you can get (again, it may vary from phone to phone). You cannot easily get access to the system and cache partition to use as storage space, and you shouldn't try to mess with that anyway.
So what you can try to do, is shove as much as possible out of the data partition onto your SD card. The free space on data can then be used as a "buffer" when you download and install applications, before you move&link them onto the SD card.
Note also that your data partition is used for updates which may have been automatically downloaded. This may take up a significant chunk of your data partition! So you may want to either:
Move the whole system app to SD card (see below described for Link2SD).
Or, "merge" the updates into the main app, so that it then resides on the system partition again.
To merge the update with the main app, long-tap (tap and hold) on the app in Link2SD and select Integrate app into system. However keep an eye on the free disk space on the system partition, you don't want it to get too close to using full capacity! So only merge updates when you're sure there is enough free space on /system.
3. Partition your SD card
It is important that you create a second partition on your SD card, formatted with the ext4 file system used by Android. Only then will you be able to move all apps completely onto SD.
On Windows, you can use Mini Tool Partition Wizard to partition your SD card and format the second partition as ext4. I won't go into detailed instructions here, there's other documentation for this on-line.
Only a few notes:
It is important that you format the ext4 partition as "primary" also!!!
You can also "resize" the first partition (the FAT32 which may already be on it), without losing your data. However if something goes wrong, you may lose the data anyway, so it's advisable to backup your data on the SD card before.
You may want to keep a FAT32 partition (also formatted as primary), because on windows systems you cannot easily read ext4, so you may want to use the FAT partition to store your pictures etc., which you can then also read from a Windows computer.
4. Use Link2SD to move your apps
Open Link2SD and you will see a list of your apps. On the top bar you can select to display only apps of certain types, e.g. "user" and "system" apps. And you can also sort them according to different criteria, e.g. "Name" or "Size". I often use "Size (total)" in the bottom of the sorting criteria list. This shows the apps which use the most data overall first.
First, we will move the "user" apps to SD.
Display all the "user" apps and click on the first one you want to move & link to SD.
You will see a detailed list of your app and data usage.
You will see buttons to Link to SD card or Remove link. Below this, you see a field titled Android App2SD in which you can Move to SD Card --- this is the classic Android way to move apps: don't use this! Use Link to SD Card instead
After selecting Link to SD card , you can tick the boxes for everything you would like to move (app/cache/internal data...), and then click OK. Link2SD will move all your stuff to the ext4 partition of your SD card and then also link to it.
The apps which also use OBB files and extra data/cache will display extra boxes in Link2SD. Try a game app for example to see this, large games are likely to use this. You can click Link to SD for these extra files also, and it'll be all moved to your SD! Warning: I've had problems particularly with moving OBB files, sometimes also with data files -- the app was not launching properly after I've moved the OBBs. This is not the fault of Link2SD though, I've had the same problems with other apps like for example FolderMount.
If you want to undo the linking, just use Link2SD and select Remove Link. All your data will be moved back to internal storage, and the link will be removed. All back to how it was before. Easy!
Now you may also want to move system apps to SD to create even more space. While system apps natively reside on the /system partition (see 2. above), they also may store data and cache on the /data partition. Or, you may also want to create more space in the /system partition by moving system apps to SD.
The problem is, even though you are rooted, you cannot move the system apps. And for many of the system apps, you shouldn't do this either. However, it is safe to do this for apps which are installed as "system" but not really an integral part of the OS, such as
Chrome
Google maps
Google docs
Google drive
YouTube
and more.
To move them, you can use Link2SD to convert them from "system" app to "user" app.
Open Link2SD and long-tap (tap and hold) on the app to open the options menu. If you have a Convert to user app option, that's that!
If you don't have the conversion option, you can try something else:
Uninstall the app first by long-tapping on the app in Link2SD, and selecting Uninstall. But first make sure you will be able to download this app from Google Play!
You will need to reboot the phone.
Re-install the app from Google Play.
Now, you can use Link2SD to link the app to SD as we did for the user apps before.
Important: Never to this for core system apps, and I would also not touch Google Play or any of its services.
Note: You may also consider to just merge the updates of a system app so that it resides in the /system partition again. See description above (2.) for more details.
5. Optimizing your RAM
What I found particularly annoying on my LG G4S (H735) is that whenever I switched between my game (large files) and another app (e.g. messaging app), the game would load up from scratch again, which would take a few minutes. The reason for this is that the default settings on the phone were set to keep a too big part of the memory "free", so other apps were "killed" as soon as I was using my game. When I then switched back to home screen, all the other apps had to be re-launched, and my game instead "killed" again.
You can decrease the threshold of reserved free memory by editing the build props. There's a risk to get an unstable system if you tweak this too much, but if you try carefully, it may be ok. And you can also reset it to defaults if you're not happy with the results.
You will need a build prop editor, for example the Build Prop Editor app. Open it, and click on the "edit" pencil below to edit the following values:
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree1=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree2=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree3=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree4=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree5=...
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree6=...
It worked like a treat on my phone (LG G4S with 1.5GB RAM) and was also reported to work nicely with the LG G3, using the following values:
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree1=49152 (unchanged)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree2=61440 (unchanged)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree3=65000 (was set to 73728 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree4=70000 (was set to 204800 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree5=80000 (was set to 262144 originally)
ro.sys.fw.mOomMinFree6=100000 (was set to 327680 originally)
Please share your experiences if you have some tipps to further optimize low-memory phones! Thanks
See also
http://forums.androidcentral.com/lg...ry-using-link2sd-w-pros-cons-vs-data2ext.html
http://www.link2sd.info/faq
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So did the linking worked! Because I tried foldermount and link2SD but none of them worked. Which I create a link it simply tries to redownload all the data. Please help!
Hi, can you please be a bit more precise about what you were trying to do? Did you do step 3, then followed by 4, which didn't work?
Uninstall foldermount or make sure it is not linking anything. I had problems with foldermount, it may mess things up in your case.
It is also important you created the right file system in your SD card partition (step 3).
A bit complicated for me but gonna try to do it, thanks man
Sent from my Lenovo A5000 using XDA-Developers mobile app
Hi man
I have a Lenovo p70
And I have 32 gb Kingston class 4
I re-partion my memory with apps2sd all in one
And I link the most apps to SD card but I have a problems
When restart my phone most of the apps disappear and I need to restart my phone with soft restart
What the problem and how I can solve it ??
---------- Post added at 01:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:18 PM ----------
And I have a question for you
Step 5 optimizing ram I don't optimizing it
If it nessesary to work plz tell me
I'm so sorry for bad language
I have swapped my older microSD card (64GB) for a larger newer one (256GB), both are formatted as external SD with the exFAT file system (so it can be read with a computer using a microSD card reader for faster and easier file transfers).
The swap initially appeared to be a success, with photos and videos taken with the Samsung stock camera app able to be stored on the new external card. A third party video recorder also worked the same on the new card as it did on the old one (able to select a specific folder and saves properly). Playing back and accessing content from the new card worked fine in a variety of applications (accessing file types: various videos, audio mp3 and FLACs, .PDF, .doc, .epub, .cbz, etc.)
Unfortunately some apps will simply not work, while others which needed to have save locations redirected returned surprising effects.
Titanium Backup v8.1.0 simply does not launch with the new card (returns error Unfortunately, Titanium Backup has stopped.) I have tried first clearing cache and then even uninstalling/re-installing the app - no dice. I swap back to the old card and all works fine. This is the failure that smarts the most as it breaks my phone's app backup plan.
Zedge v5.70.3 app launches and seems to work until I go to install anything to the phone (ringtone, notification sound or wallpaper), then I get a Download failed error and the chosen item is not added. There is no way to swap the download location for the new card. Again I have cleared cache, un-inistalled and re-installed without success. I have sent them a support ticket.
Call Recorder Pro v 1.9 (Tohsoft) required me to change the ''Location of recording'' folder to SD card (no choice of which folder) and this selection resulted in a totally different and complex directory structure used on the new card:
Code:
/storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.tohsoft.call.autocallrecorder.pro/files/CallRecorders
while on the old card I was able to use a more sensibly located folder in the root of the microSD card as follows:
Code:
/storage/6958-0839/CallRecorders
As the app works and the files can be retrieved this is not a deal breaker, but it is an added hassle now to locate the recordings!
I checked both cards using ES File Explorer and in the folder
Code:
/storage
they each show up as different folder names
old card: 6958-0839
new card: 0102-1A79
A bit of poking around searching online and I determined these were the unique volume IDs and not the volume names. Apparently these can be changed on a PC but I am unsure if this would have other implications. I also looked around for symlinking (which I use on my PCs to map my NAS shares), to see if a virtual link could be made to fool the operating system into thinking the cards were the same one. There was some info about this but I am not sure where I would put the symlink if the file system allows me to create it (on FAT file systems such as the microSD card's one this is a no no apparently, but I do not know the file system of internal memory where the link to the external SD would need to be - I wonder, is it using one of the Linux Ext file systems that support symlinks?)
I was guessing that a symlink for the new card named 6958-0839 (to look like my first working microSD card) should be placed in the following folder (after selecting Device in ES File Explorer):
Code:
/mnt/media_rw/
My handset is a Samsung Galaxy Note 4 N910U Android 6.0.1 stock rooted
I have tried searching here about this issue without success. Apologies if I am asking something that has already been answered - please direct me accordingly in this case.
Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.
Ok so I have solved it I think (TitaniumBackup launches ok again).
I changed the exFAT Volume Serial Number on the new card to be the same as the old one.
I ended up using Krylack Volume Serial Number Editor. I tried first using SysInternals VolumeID v2.1 and I was able to run the command but I was receiving an "Unrecognised Drive Type" error and the documentation says NTFS and FAT support (no mention of exFAT so maybe the tool is too old).
After applying the fix mentioned above I noticed that I am also running an app called XInternalSD with "Custom path to internal SD" ticked and the path set to
Code:
/storage/6958-0839/
I have not tried, since everything works for me now on the new card that I edited the VSN on, but I assume that if I had changed the numbers in the path field in the XInternalSD app to the new VSN that would have worked also...
So I recently ran out of storage on my Motorola G Power 2021, so I bought a micro SD to move some of my less-used but not quite expendable apps. Originally I'd planned to format as internal storage, but my phone doesn't appear to allow this and doesn't even show the option to do so. So I opted for the next best thing, migrating some of the app data over by going to Apps & notifications > All Apps > (app) > Storage & cache, but there's no option to move the app to the external storage device. As per the title, I also turned "Force allow apps on external" in developer settings to no avail. Could Motorola be blocking this too? I've done a little searching, and I can't seem to find any examples of this other than this one which was on a completely different phone brand and this one which seems to have been caused by misunderstanding and resolved.
What I've tried:
Restarting phone - didn't help
Checking other apps - checked about a dozen and none had the move to external storage option
Rooting - can't unlock bootloader as per Motorola's website
Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this, if I can work around it, or even if I can somehow format as internal storage? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Installing apps over to the microSD card isn't supported by all apps. In fact, many don’t support this feature at all. Some manufacturers - namely, Samsung and LG - reviously allowed users to format microSD cards as internal storage. That meant apps and games would be installed there by default. Sadly, this feature is no longer present on newer devices.
Technically, it’s still possible to install apps on the microSD if you’re willing to go through the trouble of rooting your Android phone and afterwareds use Link2SD to move the apps from internal storage to exernal storage.
xXx yYy said:
Installing apps over to the microSD card isn't supported by all apps. In fact, many don’t support this feature at all. Some manufacturers - namely, Samsung and LG - reviously allowed users to format microSD cards as internal storage. That meant apps and games would be installed there by default. Sadly, this feature is no longer present on newer devices.
Technically, it’s still possible to install apps on the microSD if you’re willing to go through the trouble of rooting your Android phone and afterwareds use Link2SD to move the apps from internal storage to exernal storage.
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I thought the purpose of "Force allow apps on external" was to be able to transfer any app regardless of the developers' wishes. Is this not the case?
you already gave the answer yourself
Wrig9 said:
Originally I'd planned to format as internal storage, but my phone doesn't appear to allow this and doesn't even show the option to do so.
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Click to collapse
alecxs said:
you already gave the answer yourself
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Does it have to be formatted as internal storage to be allowed to transfer apps? I guess I didn't really think about that.
Edit: Just to be sure we're all on the same page, the SD card is formatted, just not as part of the internal storage. I can access any files on it, but I can't put any apps there. I was under the impression that if you formatted as internal storage the SD card would act as a direct expansion somehow and automatically install data there once the integrated storage filled.
I haven't tested that specific option but afaik it overrides android:installLocation="preferExternal" in app manifest. that would allow to move the apk to Adoptable Storage, but requires MicroSD Card formatted as internal.
Only new apps are installed external automatically (based on that setting), for existing apps the "Migrate Data" option is offered.